Granary Burying Ground (Boston, Massachussetts, U.S.A.)

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Granary Burying Ground

The Granary Burying Ground, the city’s third-oldest cemetery, dates to 1660. A major stop in our Freedom Trail Tour, it is steps away from Boston Common and is shadowed by the towering skyscrapers of the city’s Financial District (however, just a few moments here made me forget that I was in the center of a large city). It was Independence Day when Jandy and I visited and the graves of famous personalities buried there where marked with US flags and floral wreaths. Guides, in American Colonial attire, were busy touring visitors around the cemetery.

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The Egyptian Revival-style gate

This cemetery is the final resting place of many notable Revolutionary War-era patriots such as Paul Revere (pedestal-shaped gravestone behind the Franklin Memorial) , the five victims (including African-American Crispus Attucks) of the March 5, 1770 Boston Massacre (in a common grave near the Tremont Street entrance) and three signers of the Declaration of Independence – Samuel Adams, John Hancock and Robert Treat Paine (at the side of a brick wall).

Lady guide, in American Colonial attire, touring visitors around the cemetery

As such, because of its historical connections, this quiet but fascinating, tree-filled, shade-dappled ground has been sometimes called the “Westminster Abbey” of Boston. After 1856, most burials were prohibited here.

Tomb of John Hancock

The cemetery, adjacent to Park Street Church and immediately across from Suffolk University Law School, has 2,345 grave-markers and 204 tombs but historians estimate that as many as 5,000 people are buried in it.  The reason for this is that, to save money and space, many of the graves have multiple bodies buried, four deep, under one headstone, something that was common in most old burial grounds.

The pedestal-shaped tomb of Paul Revere

Formerly known as the New Burying Ground and South Burying Ground, in 1737 it took on the name of the Old Town Granary, the granary building which stood on the site of the present-day Park Street Church. An attempt was also made to change the name to “Franklin Cemetery,” to honor the family of Benjamin Franklin, but the effort failed.

The Franklin Memorial

The cemetery’s striking and imposing but decidedly uncolonial Egyptian Revival iron gate and fence along Tremont Street, designed in 1840 by Boston sculptor and architect Isaiah Rogers (the supervising architect of the Ohio State House, he also designed an identical gate for Newport’s Touro Cemetery and the Bunker Hill Monument), was built at a cost of US$5,000 (half paid by the city and half by public subscription).

Samuel Adams Tomb

A 21-ft. high obelisk, constructed with granite from the Bunker Hill Monument quarry and dedicated on June 15, 1827, was erected to replace the original gravestones (which had been in poor condition) of the parents and relatives of Benjamin Franklin (he was born in Boston but is buried in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). Josiah Franklin, Franklin’s father, was originally from Ecton, Northamptonshire, England while his mother, Abiah (Josiah’s second wife), was born in Nantucket.

Robert Treat Paine Tomb

The second oldest memorial, for John Wakefield (who died on June 18, 1667, aged 52), lies near the Franklin monument. Many of the 17th century grave stones are carved with elaborate letters, death’s heads, and fruits of paradise.  The oldest grave stone, that of the children of Andrew Neal, was carved by the ‘Charlestown Carver’ and dates to 1666.

Children of Andrew Neal Tomb

Other prominent people buried here include:

Common grave of the 5 victims of the Boston Massacre

Granary Burying Ground: Tremont Street an Bloomfield Street, Boston MA 02108, Massachusetts. Open daily, 9 AM – 5PM. Tel: 617-635-4505.  Admission is free. To keep the burial ground protected, please make sure you stay on the designated paths.

How to Get There: If you are arriving by public transportation, take the Red and Green Lines/Park Street, the closest T station, to Boston Common and walk northeast on Tremont Street towards the Park St Church. Past the church you’ll find the Granary Burial Ground.

Boston Common (Massachusetts, USA)

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Boston Common

The 20-hectare (50-acre) Boston Common (also known as the Common), a central public park in downtown Boston, is bounded by Tremont Street (139 Tremont St.), Park Street, Beacon Street, Charles Street, and Boylston Street.  The Common is part of the Emerald Necklace of parks and parkways that extend from the Common south to Franklin Park in Jamaica Plain, Roxbury and Dorchester.

Check out “Freedom Trail“

The southern end of Boston’s Freedom Trail, a visitors’ center for all of Boston is located on the Tremont Street side of the park. This public park, forming the southern foot of Beacon Hill, is managed by the Boston Park Department and cared for by Friends of the Public Garden, a private advocacy group which also provides additional funding for maintenance and special events.

Here are some interesting trivia regarding this park:

Boston Common originally included the entire block northeast of where Park Street is now, bounded by Beacon Street and Tremont Street. In 1660, the Granary Burying Ground was established on this land as part of the Common but, in 1662, the land was separated from the Common.  The southwest portion of the block, including the Granary and a house of correction, was taken for public buildings and the north portion of the block was used for housing.

The Site of Fox Hill Plaque – erected in 1925 to the southern pillar of the Charles Street gate to mark the site of one of the most prominent features of the early Common.

Here is a historical timeline of the park:

  • In 1634, the Puritan founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony bought the land from William Blaxton (often given the modernized spelling “Blackstone”), the first European settler of Boston.
  • During the 1630s, it was used by many families as a cow pasture.
  • Before the American Revolutionary War, the Common was used as a camp by the British.  From here they left for the Battle of Lexington and Concord.
  • Up until 1817, it was used for public hangings(most of which were from a large oak which was replaced with a gallows in 1769).
  • On June 1, 1660, for repeatedly defying a law that banned Quakers from the Colony, Quaker Mary Dyer (one of the four Quakers, known as the Boston martyrs, executed on the Common) was hanged there by the Puritans.
  • On May 19, 1713, in reaction to a food shortage in the city, 200 citizens rioted on the Common, later attacking ships and warehouses of wealthy merchant Andrew Belcher, who was exporting grain to the Caribbean for higher profits. During the riot, the lieutenant governor was shot.
  • Since 1728, Tremont Mall, the first recreational promenade (an imitation of  James’s Park in London), had been in place.
  • In 1804, the bordering Sentry Street was renamed Park Place (later to be called Park Street), acknowledging the reality of its becoming a park (renaming the Common as Washington Park was also proposed).
  • In 1830, Mayor Harrison Gray Otis formally banned cows from grazing on it. True park status seems to have emerged during that time.
  • By 1836, an ornamental iron fence fully enclosed the Common and its five perimeter malls or recreational promenades.
  • In 1913 and 1986, prehistoric sites were discovered on the Common indicating Native American presence in the area as far back as 8,500 years ago
  • In 1977, the Common was designated as a Boston Landmark by the Boston Landmarks Commission.
  • On February 27, 1987, it was declared a U.S. National Historic Landmark.
  • On August 27, 2007, two teenagers were shot on the Common (one of the bullets fired during the shooting struck the Massachusetts State House). A strict curfew has since been enforced, which has been protested by the homeless population of Boston.

Blackstone Memorial Tablet, near the corner of Park Street and Tremont Street, was designed and erected in 1913 by R. Clipston Sturgis. It recalls the founding of Boston Common in 1634.

Today, the Common serves as a public park for all to use for formal or informal gatherings. Events such as concerts, protests, softball games, and ice skating (on Frog Pond) often take place in the park. Notable formal or informal gatherings that took place here include:

  • In early 1965, a hundred people gathered on the Common to protest the Vietnam War.
  • On April 23, 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech here to protest racial imbalance in schools and housing.
  • On October 15, 1969, a second Vietnam War protest happened here, this time with 100,000 people protesting.
  • On August 31, 1967, Judy Garland gave her largest concert ever (100,000+) on the Common.
  • On October 1, 1979, Pope John Paul II said mass to an estimated 400,000 people.
  • On May 31, 1990, on his way to Washington D.C. to sign agreements with U.S. President George H.W. Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev gave a speech in the Common.
  • On October 21, 2006, 30,128 Jack-o’-lanterns were lit simultaneously around the park at the Life is good Pumpkin Festival, setting a new world record. The previous record, held by Keene, New Hampshire since 2003, was 28,952.
  • On January 21, 2017, approximately 175,000 people marched from the Common to the Back Bay vicinity to profess resistance to the perceived anti-women viewpoints held by president Donald Trump.
  • On August 19, 2017, in the wake of events in Charlottesville, VA the week before, approximately 40,000 people marched from Roxbury Crossing to Boston Common to protest hate speech and white supremacy. A right-wing “Free Speech” rally had been planned on Boston Common, which some feared would draw members of the KKK, Neo Nazis and other hate groups. Boston Mayor Marty Walsh deemed the “Fight Supremacy” counter protest a great success.

Boston Common Frog Pond, renowned for its winter skating program and skating activities, features public skating, skating lessons, and skating programs for students.

The Boston Common Frog Pond, sitting at the heart of Boston Common, is managed by The Skating Club of Boston in partnership with the City of Boston.  It is home to a winter ice skating rink and learn-to-skate school, a reflecting pool in the spring and fall, and a summer spray pool and children’s carousel. At the southwest corner of the Common lie softball fields.

John Paul II Plaque

A grassy area, forming the western part of the park, is most commonly used for the park’s largest events. Under this part of the Common lies a parking garage.  A granite slab there commemorates Pope John Paul II‘s October 1, 1979 visit to Boston.

Robert Gould Shaw Memorial

The Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, a bronze relief sculpture unveiled on May 31, 1897 by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, stands at 24 Beacon cor. Park Street, the northeast corner of the Common, opposite the State House It depicts Col.  Robert Gould Shaw leading the Afro-American 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry as it marched down Beacon Street on May 28, 1863.

The 126-ft. high, Neo-Classical Soldiers and Sailors Monument, a victory column on Flag Staff Hill in the Common, was designed by Martin Milmore.  Erected in memory of Massachusetts soldiers and sailors who died in the American Civil War, its construction began in 1874 and the monument was dedicated on September 17, 1877.

Soldiers & Sailors Monument

The Boston Massacre Memorial, dedicated November 14, 1888, was designed by Robert Kraus.  The bas relief depicts the events before the Old State House on March 5, 1770, featuring Crispus Attucks, the first to fall. The bronze figure represents Revolution breaking the chains of tyranny.

One of four 8 foot high carved granite figures, at the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, representing the northern, southern, eastern and western sections of the reunited nation

The Oneida Football Monument memorializes the Common as the site of the first organized football games in the United States, played by the Oneida Football Club in 1862.  Plaque to the Great Elm tree celebrates the legacy and importance of the Great Elm Tree to the Boston Common.  A major storm that included heavy winds toppled it on February 15, 1876.

Brewer Fountain

The 6.7-m. (22-ft.) tall, 6,800-kg. (15,000-pound) Brewer Fountain, standing near the corner of Park and Tremont Streets, by Park Street Station, is a bronze fountain cast in Paris and gifted to the city by Gardner Brewer. It began to function for the first time on June 3, 1868.

Memorial to the Nurses of the Armed Services

The Boylston and Park Street stations, the first two subway stations in the Western Hemisphere, lie underneath the southern and eastern corners of the park, respectively.  Both stations have been in near-continuous operation since the opening of the first portion of the Tremont Street Subway (now part of the MBTA‘s Green Line) on September 1, 1897.

Royal Navy Plaque, installed on the western entrance to Boston Common, bordering the Public Garden, is a token of gratitude from the Royal Navy to the people of Boston, for their hospitality during World War II.

The Parkman Bandstand, in the eastern part of the park, is used in musical and theatrical productions, concerts, rallies, and speeches. Recent notable gatherings include the Boston Freedom Rally and a 2007 Presidential Primary rally in which both Barack Obama and Deval Patrick gave speeches from the bandstand. It was built in 1912 from a design by Derby, Robinson & Shephard at a cost of $1 million on the site of the Cow Pond (also known as the Horse Pond).  It was restored in 1996. 

Parkman Bandstand

Boston Common: 139 Tremont St, Boston, Massachusetts 02111. 

Boston Public Garden (Massachusetts, USA)

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Boston Public Garden

The large Boston Public Garden (also known as Public Garden), adjacent to Boston Common, is the first public botanical garden in America. A part of the Emerald Necklace system of parks (a long string of parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted), it is bounded by Charles Street (which divides the Public Garden from Boston Common) to the east, Beacon Street (where it faces Beacon Hill) to the north, Arlington Street and Back Bay to the west, and Boylston Street to the south.  Connecting the Public Garden with the rest of the Emerald Necklace is the greenway, a strip of park that runs west down the center of Commonwealth Avenue towards the Back Bay Fens and the Muddy River.

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The Public Garden was established in 1837, when philanthropist Horace Gray petitioned for the use of land as the first public botanical garden in the United States. In October 1859, after submitting the detailed plan for the Garden to the Committee on the Common and Public Squares, Alderman Crane received approval and construction began quickly on the property.  The pond was finished that year and, in 1862, the wrought iron fence surrounding the perimeter was erected. George F. Meacham designed the 97,000 m2 (24-acre) landscape while city engineer, James Slade, and the forester, John Galvin laid out the paths and flower beds. Many of fountains and statues for the garden were erected in the late 1860s.

On January 6, 1913, the garden, along with the Boston Common, were placed by the City Council  under the direct management of the Public Grounds Department of the city. the Mayor’s Office, The Parks Department of the City of Boston and the non-profit Friends of the Public Garden jointly manages the Public Garden. In 1977, it was designated a Boston Landmark by the Boston Landmarks Commission  and, on February 27, 1987, was declared a National Historic Landmark.

The Public Garden, rectangular in shape, designed in the style of an English landscape garden, mostly flat and varying in elevation by less than five feet, contains a pond, a bridge crossing over the pond, winding and asymmetrical pathways and a large series of formal plantings that vary from season to season and are maintained by the city and others.

The garden is planted with a wide assortment of native and introduced trees.  Weeping willows are found around the shore of the lagoon while European and American elms  line the garden’s pathways, along with horse chestnuts, dawn redwoods, European beeches, ginkgo trees and one California redwood. Permanent flower planted in the garden include numerous varieties of roses, bulbs, and flowering shrubs. Throughout the year, the beds flanking the central pathway are replanted on a rotating schedule, with different flowers for each season from mid-spring through early autumn. The city operates 14 greenhouses at Franklin Park for the purpose of supplying plants.

Arlington Street Gate

During the warmer seasons, the 16,000 m2 (4-acre) pond is the home of a great many ducks, as well as of one or more swans (the current pair are female mute swans named Romeo and Juliet after the Shakespearian couple). The Swan Boats, which began operating in 1877, is a popular tourist attraction where, for a small fee, tourists can sit on a boat ornamented with a white swan at the rear.

Jandy at the pond

A tour guide, sitting within the swan, pedals the boat around the pond. As the pond is no more than 3 feet deep at its deepest point, it easily freezes during the colder months. The north side of the pond has a small island, originally was a peninsula connected to the land but severed by John Galvin, the city forester, as the site became so popular with lovers.

Boston Public Garden Foot Bridge

The signature suspension bridge, over the middle of the pond, was designed by William G. Preston and opened in 1869. Before its conversion to a girder bridge in 1921, it was the world’s shortest functioning suspension bridge (the original suspension system is now merely decorative).

The author by the foot bridge

A flagpole, standing on the eastern side of the garden, close to Charles Street and just south of the main entrance there, has a circular granite bench was installed around it, with the work being done by the Friends of the Public Garden.

Equestrian Statue of George Washington

Maintained by the City of Boston, the city’s efforts are supplemented by the Friends of the Public Garden (also known as the Rose Brigade), a charitable organization that helped finance the repair of the Ether Monument in 2006.  They also hire specialists to help care for the trees and bushes. Regularly, volunteers meet to prune and maintain bushes. Private sources (such as the Beacon Hill Garden Club) also provide financial support.

Throughout the Public Garden are several statues:

  • The 16 ft. tall, bronze Equestrian Statue of George Washington, located at the Arlington Street gate and dominating the western entrance to the park facing Commonwealth Avenue, was designed and cast by Thomas Ball and unveiled on July 3, 1869. The statue stands upon a granite pedestal of 16 ft., for a total height of 38 ft.. Constructed entirely by Massachusetts artists and artisans, the statue was funded mostly by donations from local citizens.
  • The William Ellery Channing Statue, at 28 Arlington Street at the southwest corner of the garden, stands across from the Arlington Street Church where Channing, the leading Unitarian minister of his day, ministered from 1803 until his death in 1842. Sculpted by Herbert Adams and given to the city by John Foster, a member of that church, the  marble and granite statue went up in June 1903, the 100th anniversary of Channing’s birth.
  • The Charles Sumner Statue, a bronze and granite statue of the fiery abolitionist senator from Massachusetts during the Civil War era, was designed by Thomas Ball (the same sculptor behind the Public Garden’s far more famous George Washington statue) and set up in 1878.
  • The Tadeusz Kościuszko Statue, a bronze and granite statue of the Polish hero sculpted by artist Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson, went up in 1927 to commemorate the 150th anniversary Kosciuszko’s enlistment in the Continental Army as a colonel.
  • The Thomas Cass Statue, a bronze and granite statue cast by Richard Edwin Brooks in 1899, depicts this Irish immigrant who rose to the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army and commander of the 9th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War and would die in Boston of wounds sustained in Virginia in 1862.
  • The Edward Everett Hale Statue of Bela Pratt, a bronze and granite statue of the clergyman and journalist sculpted by Bela Lyon Pratt (whose uncle was Edward Everett, namesake of the Boston suburb, and whose granduncle was Nathan Hale) at the east gate on Charles Street, was erected and presented to the city on May 22, 1913.
  • The Wendell Phillips Statue, a granite and stone depiction of abolitionist orator and lawyer along the south walk in the park, was sculpted by Daniel Chester French (best-known for sculpting the statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial in D.C.) and erected in 1915. Mayor John F. Fitzgerald appropriated funds of $20,000 for the statue.
  • Learning, Religion, and Industry, three bronze and granite sculptures right between the Boston Common Visitors Center and Tremont Street, were erected in 1961 to honor Boston philanthropist George Francis Parkman Jr.. The trio was sculpted by Arcangelo Cascieri and Adio diBiccari.
  • Triton Babies Fountain, created by Anna Coleman Ladd on the east side of the garden, is the first statue in the Garden that was made by a woman. Acquired by the garden in 1927, some people think the children are a boy and girl.  However, they are, in fact, her two daughters.
  • Make Way for Ducklings, located between the pond and the Charles and Beacon streets entrance, are a set of bronze statues by Nancy Schön, dating from 1987 and based on the main characters from the children’s story .

Edward Everett Hale Statue

The Marquis de Lafayette Plaque, at 5 Temple Place just back from where Tremont Street meets Temple Place, honors the famed aide de camp to General Washington during the Revolution who tried to spur similar idealism in his native France. This bas-relief, designed by John Francis Paramino, went up in 1924 on the 100th anniversary of Lafayette’s 1824 visit.  The plaque also commemorates the grand Lafayette Mall that used to run along that side of the Common. Opened in 1824 in honor of Lafayette’s visit to the city, it disappeared into present-day Tremont in the late 1890s to make way for the T.

Statue of William Ellery Channing

The 30 ft. tall, granite and red marble Ether Monument, located towards the corner of Arlington and Beacon streets in the northwest corner of the garden, is the oldest monument in the garden.  Commemorating the first use of ether as an anesthetic, it was designed by John Quincy Adams Ward and gifted to the city on June 27, 1868, by Thomas Lee.  The statue’s carved figures tell the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

Statue of Tadeusz Kosiuszko

Daniel Chester French and Henry Bacon’s granite and bronze memorial fountain to the Boston philanthropist George Robert White entitled “The Angel of the Waters,” created in 1924, is located just north of the Ether Monument.  The fountain, disabled in the 1980s, was repaired and restored 2016 by the Friends of the Public Garden at a cost of US$700,000.

Statue of Thomas Cass

“Boy and Bird,” a fountain on the west side of the garden, was made by Bashka Paeff, a Russian immigrant who did the model of it while she was working as a ticket taker at the Park Street Station of the MBTA.  A Japanese garden lantern, dating from 1587 (one of the oldest lanterns of its kind in existence) and installed at the edge of the pond in 1906, was gifted to Boston by Bunkio Matsuki. Made of cast iron, it was originally in the garden of the Momoya Palace at Kyoto.

Statue of Charles Sumner

The memorial to the 206 people from Massachusetts who died in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, designed by Victor Walker and dedicated in July 2004, is located just inside the Public Garden, at the corner of Arlington and Newbury streets. A plaque honoring United States Marine Lt. Michael P. Quinn, of Charlestown, killed in action in Vietnam on August 29, 1969, is located at the beginning of the bridge by the steps leading to the Swan Boats. It was dedicated in 1986 by the committee members of the Michael P. Quinn Scholarship Fund on Patriots Day.

Statue of Wendell Philips

Boston Public Garden: 4 Charles St., Boston 02116 Massachusetts.

Gallery at the Historical Museum of Natural History (Boston, Massachusetts)

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RH Boston – The Gallery at the Historical Museum of Natural History

This stately Neo-Classical, red brick and-brownstone building, commanding a park-like block of Berkeley St., between Newbury and Boylston in Boston’s Back Bay, was designed by architect William Gibbons Preston in 1863.  Originally the Museum of Natural History, it was known, over the years to Bostonians, as the Bonwit Teller building and later the  home to the clothier Louis Boston.

The Neo-Classical, red brick and brownstone facade

Now Restoration Hardware’s (a California-based home-furnishings company) Boston flagship store, it was redesigned by AD 100 firm Backen, Gillam & Kroeger Architects, the designers of numerous other RH stores. To approximate the original interior, the designers consulted old photographs and architectural drawings.

In a renovation work that was, more or less, a complete gut requiring 15 months, they took out mezzanines inserted by previous tenants, removed an elevator bank that blocked the central axis through the building and painstakingly restored and recreated original millwork, plaster and steel details.

The Central Atrium

Wall, ceiling and decorative surfaces were coated in neutral gray. Most significant, to recapture views from the ground floor all the way to the gilded, coffered ceiling, they opened up the 70 ft. high, 3-storey central atrium.

The glass and steel traction elevator

Unveiled spring of 2103, the 40,000 sq. ft. RH Design Gallery is the largest outpost for this expanding retailer whose product categories includes tabletop goods (Chinese porcelain dinnerware, Belgian linens, etc.) and “objects of curiosity” (architectural fragments, faux antlers, iPod-compatible reproduction Victrolas, etc.).

When I entered glass and steel entry pavilion of this Civil War–era structure, I was enthralled by its graceful Corinthian pilasters, Romanesque arches, and monumental interior atrium. Gliding up and down the atrium is the store’s pièce de résistance – a new, custom glass and steel traction elevator modeled after the one in Los Angeles’s 1893 Bradbury Building.

The store’s four floors (including a basement level) offer a florist and a dedicated area for RH’s Baby & Child collections (featuring pint-size leather chesterfields and armchairs). In addition, there’s masculine spaces such as wine bar run by Ma(i)sonry Napa Valley (of Yountville, California).

There’s also a quartet of club rooms – a billiard lounge with a rehabbed Brunswick pool table, a cinema room where TVs play classic movies, an inviting library packed with vintage novels and design books, and a pub serving craft beers at a century-old bar surrounded by Motown and rock-and-roll memorabilia.

Sharing the floor with the club rooms is a Paris-themed “conservatory and park.” Here, outdoor furniture is displayed among artificial olive trees and a 24 ft. tall steel replica of the Eiffel Tower (a flea-market find and a fitting totem of RH’s Francophile design impulses).

Check out “Eiffel Tower“

Gallery at the Historical Museum of Natural History: 34 Berkeley St., Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. Website: www.restorationhardware.com.

Park Street Church (Boston, Massachusetts)

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Park Street Church

The Park Street Church, an active, thriving missionary-centered Conservative Congregational church with 2,000 in Sunday attendance and around 1,000 members, is a historical stop on the Freedom Trail located next to the historic Granary Burying Ground.

Check out “Freedom Trail“

Its cornerstone was laid on May 1, 1809 and its construction, under the guidance of architect Peter Banner (his design is reminiscent of St. Bride’s Church in London by famous British architect Christopher Wren), chief mason Benajah Young  and woodcarver Solomon Willard, was completed by the end of the year. On January 10, 1810, it had its first worship service.

The church became known as “Brimstone Corner,” in part because of the fervent missionary character of its preaching and, in part, because of the gunpowder stored in its crypt (which gave off a ferocious smell of sulfur) during the War of 1812.

The church’s beautiful white steeple, a landmark visible from several Boston neighborhoods, rises to 66 m. (217 ft.), making the church the tallest building in the United States from 1810 to 1828. The red brick façade has white accents.  There is a little museum on the first floor.

The church is the site of a number of historical events:

Park Street Church: 1 Park St. cor. Tremont St., Boston, Massachusetts 02108. Tel: (617) 523-3383.  Website: www.parkstreet.org. Open Wednesdays – Fridays, 9:30 AM -3 PM. Worship services: Sundays 8:30 AM, 11 AM and 4 PM. Admission is free.

How to Get There: The church located right across from the Park Street subway stop (Red Line) at the edge of Boston Common.

Freedom Trail (Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.)

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Bunker Hill Monument

The iconic Freedom Trail, a unique collection of explanatory ground markers, museums, notable churches, meeting houses, burying grounds, parks, a historic naval frigate, and historic markers that tell the story of the American Revolution and beyond, is a 2.5-mile (4-km.) long path through downtown Boston, Massachusetts, that passes by 16 locations significant to the history of the United States. Marked largely with brick, it winds between Boston Common to the Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown.

Old State House

Old North Church

Park Street Church

Check out “Park Street Church“

Overseen by the City of Boston’s Freedom Trail Commission, the Freedom Trail is supported, in part, by grants from various nonprofits and foundations, private philanthropy, and Boston National Historical Park.

Copp’s Hill Burying Ground

Granary Burying Ground

Check out “Copp’s Hill Burying Ground” and “Granary Burying Ground” 

While most of the sites are free or suggest donations, the Old South Meeting House, the Old State House, and the Paul Revere House charge an admission fee.

Boston Common

Author and son Jandy at Boston Massacre Site

In 1951, local journalist William Schofield suggested building a pedestrian trail to link important local landmarks and Boston mayor John Hynes decided to put Schofield’s idea into action.

Faneuil Hall

Massachusetts State House

Check out “Massachusetts State House“

The official trail sites are (generally from south-to-north):

  1. Boston Common (139 Tremont St.) – dating from 1634, it is the oldest city park in the city.
  2. Massachusetts State House – designed by noted architect Charles Bulfinch and completed in 1798, it the state capitol and seat of government for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
  3. Park Street Church – built in 1809, it is an active Conservative Congregational church in Downtown Boston
  4. Granary Burying Ground – Boston’s third-oldest cemetery, founded in 1660,it is the final resting place for many notable Revolutionary War-era patriots, including Paul Revere, the five victims of the Boston Massacre, and three signers of the Declaration of Independence: Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Robert Treat Paine.
  5. King’s Chapel and Burying Ground – completed in 1754, the chapel is one of the finest designs of the noted colonial architect Peter Harrison.  The Burying Ground is the oldest cemetery in the city.
  6. Benjamin Franklin statue and former site of Boston Latin School
  7. Old Corner Bookstore
  8. Old South Meeting House (where the Boston Tea Party began in 1773) – 310 Washington St, Boston, MA 02108, USA. Open 9:30 AM – 5 PM. Admission: adults (US$5), children under 5 years are free.
  9. Old State House (the original seat of colonial government & later state capitol, today housing historical exhibits) – 206 Washington St, Boston, MA 02109, USA. Open 9 AM – 5 PM. Admission: adults (US$10), children 6-18 years are free.
  10. Site of the Boston Massacre – site of a confrontation, on March 5, 1770, in which British soldiers shot and killed several people while being harassed by a mob
  11. Faneuil Hall – a marketplace (open 11AM -7PM) and a meeting hall since 1743, it was the site of several speeches by Samuel Adams, James Otis, and others encouraging independence from Great Britain.
  12. Paul Revere House – the colonial home (for about 20 years) of famous legendary American patriot, famous “Midnight Rider,” silversmith, businessman and entrepreneur Paul Revere during the time of the American Revolution
  13. Old North Church – built in December 1723, itis the location from which the famous “One if by land, and two if by sea” signal is said to have been sent.
  14. Copp’s Hill Burying Ground – established in 1659, it is the city’s second cemetery.
  15. USS Constitution (interactive museum near the 1797 wooden frigate made famous as “Old Ironsides” in the War of 1812) – Building 22, Charlestown Navy Yard, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA. Open 9 AM – 6 PM. Admission: suggested donation of US$5-$10 for adults, US$3-$5 for children.
  16. Bunker Hill Monument – erected between 1825 and 1843,commemorate the Battle of Bunker Hill, which was among the first major battles between British and Patriot forces in the American Revolutionary War, fought there June 17, 1775.

The Black Heritage Trail crosses the Freedom Trail between the Massachusetts State House and Park Street Church. The Boston Irish Famine Memorial is also located along the Freedom Trail.

King’s Chapel

Paul Revere House

Check out “Paul Revere House“

The National Park Service, via a visitor’s center, offer tours, provide free maps of the Freedom Trail and other historic sites, and sell books about Boston and United States history.

USS Constitution

Check out “The USS Constitution – Old Ironsides“

Boston Common Visitor’s Center: 139 Tremont St., Boston, Massachusetts 02111.  Website: www.thefreedomtrail.org. Open Mondays –Fridays, 8:30 AM – 5PM, and Saturdays & Sundays,
9AM – 5PM.

The Copley Place Visitor Information Center: Copley Place Mall (center court), 100 Huntington Ave., Boston, Massachusetts  02116.  Open Mondays – Saturdays, 9AM – 8PM, and Sundays, 9AM – 6PM.

Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture – National Portrait Gallery (Washington D.C., U.S.A.)

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National Portrait Gallery

The National Portrait Gallery, a historic art museum housed in the historic Old Patent Office Building (as is the Smithsonian American Art Museum), now the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, is part of the Smithsonian Institution.

Today, the National Portrait Gallery continues to narrate the multi-faceted and ever-changing story of America through the individuals who have shaped its culture and, through the visual arts, performing arts and new media, it presents poets and presidents, visionaries and villains, actors and activists whose lives form our national identity.

Check out “Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture” and  “Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture – Smithsonian American Art Museum”

Abraham Lincoln (Charles Wesley Jarvis, 1861)

Initially restricted to paintings, prints, drawings, and engravings, the collections, over the years, have grown from more than 2,000 items  1981 and, in 1990, the number of images in the museum’s photography collection reached 8,500 objects. As of 2011, the National Portrait Gallery was the only museum in the United States dedicated solely to portraiture.

In 2013, the museum had 65 employees and an annual budget of $9 million.  February 2013, it housed 21,200 works of art, which had been seen 1,069,932 visitors in 2012.  Today, the NPG collection of over 23,000 items, in all media, from daguerreotypes to digital, had grown so large that the exhibit drew its images almost entirely from the museum’s own collection.

Douglas MacArthur (Howard Chandler Christy, c. 1952)

The Hall of Presidents, a hallmark of the NPG’s permanent collection, is the largest and most complete collection in the world, except for the White House collection itself. Containing portraits of nearly all American presidents, the centerpiece of the Hall of Presidents is the famous Lansdowne portrait of George Washington. How the museum obtains presidential images has changed over the years.

From 1962 to 1987, presidential portraits were usually obtained through purchase or donation but, beginning in 1998, NPG began commissioning portraits of presidents, starting with George H. W. Bush, for its “America’s Presidents” exhibition (Gilbert Stuart’s Lansdowne portrait of George Washington is the grand introductory image to this exhibition). In 2000, NPG began commissioning portraits of First Ladies as well, beginning with Hillary Clinton.

Dwight D. Eisenhower (Thomas Edgar Stephens)

Funds for these commissions are privately raised, and each portrait costs about $150,000 to $200,000. It still continues to acquire portraits (including paintings, sculpture, photographs, caricatures, video, and time-based media) of each succeeding president.

The NPG hosts the prestigious Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, a triennial, juried contemporary portrait exhibition widely regarded as the most prestigious portrait competition in the United States.  It also brings commissioned works into the collection. Artists working in the fields of painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, and other media are allowed to enter.

William T. Sherman (George Peter Alexander Healy, 1866)

Works must be created through a face-to-face encounter with the subject. The winner of this inaugural competition was David Lenz of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  He was commissioned to paint a portrait of Eunice Kennedy Shriver (the founder of the Special Olympics), the first portrait commissioned of an individual who has not served as a President or First Lady.

On the left is a portrait of Stephen Van Rensselaer III (John Wesley Jarvis, 1825-35) while on the right is a portrait of Antonia Pantoja (Manny Vega, marble, glass and stone, 2014)

Dave Woody of Fort Collins, Colorado, the 2009 winner, was commissioned to photograph food pioneer Alice Waters, founder of the Chez Panisse Restaurant and Cafe, the Edible Schoolyard and champion of the Slow Food movement.

Samuel Francis Du Pont (Daniel Huntington, 1867-68)

During the 2013 competition, the total prize money of $42,000 was awarded to the top eight commended artists, and the winner received $25,000 and a commission to make a portrait for the museum’s permanent collection. The artist and the NPG curators jointly decided the subject of the commission. The 2013 winner was Bo Gehring of Beacon, New York, who was commissioned to direct a close-up video and sound portrait of jazz musician Esperanza Spalding which drew delight and praise from visitors.

Here is the historical timeline of the gallery:

  • In 1962, the National Portrait Gallery was authorized and founded Congress with the mission to acquire and display portraits of individuals who have made significant contributions to the history, development, and culture of the people of the United States.
  • In 1965 (the bicentennial of James Smithson‘s birth), “Nucleus for a National Collection,” the first NPG exhibit, went on display in the Arts and Industries Building.
  • In 1966, the NPG completed the Catalog of American Portraits, the first inventory of portraiture held the Smithsonian. The catalog also documented the physical characteristics of each artwork, and its provenance (author, date, ownership, etc.). That same year, the museum moved into the Old Patent Office Building with the National Fine Arts Collection.
  • In 1968, Gilbert Stuart’s 2.4 5 m. (8  5 ft.) Lansdowne portrait (commissioned in April 1796  Senator William Bingham of Pennsylvania—one of the wealthiest men in America at the time) of George Washington was exhibited  the National Portrait Gallery, and it remained there on indefinite loan.
  • In 1969, the Old Patent Office Building was renovated the architectural firm of Faulkner, Fryer and Vanderpool.
  • In 1971, the NPG began the National Portrait Survey, an attempt to catalog and photograph all portraits in all formats held every public and private collection and museum in the country.
  • On July 4, 1973, “The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution, 1770–1800,” the first exhibit at the museum dedicated solely to African Americans, was opened the NPG.
  • In 1974, Philanthropist Paul Mellon donated 761 portraits  French-American engraver B.J.F. de Saint-Mémin to the museum.
  • In January 1976, Congress passed legislation allowing the NPG to collect portraits in media other than graphic arts, permitting the NPG to begin collecting photographs.
  • In October 1976, the NPG established a Department of Photographs.
  • 1977, the NPG had three curatorial divisions (Painting and sculpture, prints and drawings, and photography).
  • In September 1978, Facing the Light: Historic American Portrait Daguerreotypes,” the gallery’s first photography exhibit, was opened.
  • In February 1977, the museum acquired an 1880 self-portrait  Mary Cassatt, one of only two painted
  • In December 1977, the museum acquired a self-portrait  celebrated early American artist John Singleton Copley. The roundel (a circular canvas), one of only four self-portraits, was donated to the NPG the Cafritz Foundation.
  • In May 1978, Time magazine donated 850 original portraits which had graced its cover between 1928 and 1978.
  • In May 1979, a major exhibit of these Time magazine pieces debuted.
  • In April 1979, the Coolidge family of Boston donated five portraits of presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, John Adams, and James Madison Gilbert Stuart, known as the Gibbs-Coolidge set, to the NPG.
  • In December 1979, the Henry Cabot Lodge family in Massachusetts donated a bust of Alexander Hamilton  John Trumbull (which may have been sculpted from the portrait which was later used for the $10 bill) and a Gilbert Stuart portrait of Representative Fisher Ames to the museum.
  • In April 1980, Varina Webb Stewart and Joel A.H. Webb, Jefferson Davis‘ great-grandchildren, presented important portraits of Jefferson Davis and his wife, Varina Howell Davis, to the NPG.
  • In 1980, the museum obtained, through purchase and loan, a number of works of graphic artist Howard Chandler Christy for exhibit. Works displayed ranged from his “Christy girl” recruiting posters to history-based works such as Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States.
  • On February 7, 1980, the Museum of Fine Arts and NPG agreed to jointly purchase the two famous, unfinished Gilbert Stuart portraits of George and Martha Washington  owned  the Boston Athenaeum, which loaned them to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1876. Under the agreement, the paintings would spend three years at the National Portrait Gallery (beginning in July 1980), and then three years in Boston at the Museum of Fine Arts.
  • In 1981, two major 19th-century photography collections were added the museum. They acquired the Frederick Hill Meserve Collection of 5,419 glass negatives produced  the studio of famed Civil War photograph Mathew Brady and his assistants and, using historically accurate chemicals, paper, and techniques, prints were made of the negatives and the prints placed on rotating display.  Later, they purchased, from the Meserve family, 5,400 Civil War-era glass negatives produced  photographer Alexander Gardner including the famous “cracked-plate” portrait of Abraham Lincoln (taken in February 1865), the last photographic portrait of Lincoln taken before his death in April 1865.
  • In 1982, the museum purchased, for $1 million, a Gilbert Stuart portrait of Thomas Jefferson, to a private collector. A portion of the purchase price came from the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns and operates Jefferson’s historic plantation home of Monticello. The two parties agreed have the portrait spend time at both locations.
  • In 1984, museum purchased an Edgar Degas portrait of his friend, Mary Cassatt, for $1.3 million.
  • On December 31, 1984, a thief pried open a display case and stole four handwritten documents accompanying several portraits of Civil War generals. One of the documents was written and signed President Abraham Lincoln. The remaining three were written and signed  Civil War generals Ulysses S. Grant, George Meade, and George Armstrong Custer.
  • On February 8, 1985, all four documents were recovered when police arrested Norman James Chandler, a part-time mechanic’s assistant from Maryland, for the theft. Chandler quickly pleaded guilty. He was sentenced in April 1985 to two years in jail (with all but six months suspended) and two years of probation, and required to pay a $2,000 fine.
  • In 1985, the the NPG acquired their first nude work – a self-portrait painting Alice Neel painted when was 80 years old.
  • In 1987, noted photographer Irving Penn donated 120 platinum prints of fashion and celebrity portraits he produced over the past 50 years.
  • In 1990, the first daguerreotype (an early photographic process) of African American abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass (one of only four daguerreotypes of Douglass known to exist) was acquired.
  • In 1996, the NPG obtained, for $115,000, the earliest known daguerreotype portrait of abolitionist John Brown (created  African-American photographer Augustus Washington), whose 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry helped to spark the Civil War.
  • In January 2000, the NPG closed for a renovation of the Old Patent Office Building. Intended to take two years and cost $42 million, the renovation took seven years and cost $283 million.
  • In the fall of 2000, Neil Primrose, 7th Earl of Rosebery, offered to sell The Lansdowne portrait given as a gift to British Prime Minister William Petty FitzMaurice (the 2nd Earl of Shelburne, and later became the first Marquess of Lansdowne, hence the name of the portrait). Lansdowne died in 1805, and in 1890 the painting was purchased  the 5th Earl of Rosebery.
  • On March 13, 2001, the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation donated $30 million to buy the Lansdowne portrait. The $30 million donation included $6 million to put the portrait on a national tour for three years (the NPG was closed for renovations until 2006), and $4 million to construct a new display area (named for media baron Donald W. Reynolds, who created the foundation) in the Old Patent Office Building to display it.
  • In 2006, the NPG hosted the first Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition (named after long time docent and volunteer Virginia Outwin Boochever),. It drew more than 4000 entries, from which 51 finalists were chosen.
  • After the 2008 presidential election, Obama supporter Tony Podesta and his wife, Heather, donated graphic artist Shepard Fairey‘s ubiquitous “Hope” poster of Barack Obama to the National Portrait Gallery.
  • In November 2010, the NPG hosted “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” a major new exhibit, from October 30, 2010, to February 13, 2011, of 105 pieces curated  David C. Ward and Jonathan Katz. The exhibit focused on depictions of homosexual love through history, and was the first exhibit hosted a museum of national stature to address the topic and was also the largest and most expensive exhibit in the NPG’s history. Included in the in the exhibit was a four-minute, edited version of “A Fire in My Belly,” a short silent film  artist David Wojnarowicz. Eleven seconds of the video depicted a crucifix covered in ants.
  • In 2012, the NPG sponsored “Poetic Likeness: Modern American Poets,” a new temporary exhibit which focused on images of great American poets.

The museum’s more notable art pieces include:

Among the museum’s more prominent collections are:

  • Alexander Gardner (photography)
  • Howard Chandler Christy (graphic arts)
  • Irving Penn (photography)
  • Mathew Brady (photography)
  • Time magazine covers (graphic arts)

The Great Hall

Although most of the interior has been altered for use as a museum, parts of the Old Patent Office interior are still visible.   From Robert Mills’ graceful double curved cantilevered stone staircases, one then enters the Model Hall on the building’s third floor and, turning right, leads one down the Great Hall and into more of the Patent Office’s galleries.

The painting Grant and His Generals” (Ole Peter Hansen Balling) above the graceful double curved cantilevered stone staircases

After a fire in 1877 destroyed the third floor of the building, the Great Hall, the reception area where President Lincoln and Mrs. Lincoln greeted guests attending the second inaugural ball, was remodeled by Adolf Cluss and his partner, architect Paul Schulze. The resulting interior space, a dramatic riot of color, was originally called the Model Hall. It is accentuated with late-nineteenth-century architectural highlights and has a hand-laid encaustice tille floor, curving double staircase, soaring vaulted ceilings and lit by stained glass windows.

The hall celebrates great American scientists and four of them (Benjamin Franklin, Robert Fulton, Thomas Jefferson, and Eli Whitney) are represented on large medallions in the corners of the Hall.   It seats 300 (seated dinner) and  366 (Reception) people, respectively.

The enclosed, 28,000-sq. ft. Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard, one of the largest and most magnificent event spaces in Washington, DC., was opened to the public on November 18, 2007 and was named after Washington philanthropists and art collectors Robert and Arlene Kogod.  With an elegant glass canopy, the courtyard, designed  world-renowned architects at Foster + Partners in London, provides a distinctive, contemporary accent to the museums’ Greek Revival building.

Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard

The wavy glass-and-steel roof, appearing to float over the courtyard, lets in natural light but protects visitors from the elements. So that the weight of the roof does not affect the historic building, the double-glazed glass panels, set in a grid, are completely supported  eight anodized aluminum-clad columns located around the perimeter of the courtyard.

Michael Jackson (Andy Warhol, 1984)

The courtyard’s interior design, created  internationally acclaimed landscape designer Kathryn Gustafson of Seattle-based Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd., features four water scrims (each one-quarter inch deep and allowed to traverse the entire length of the courtyard); ficus and black olive trees; a variety of shrubs and ferns as well as plantings in white marble containers on a black granite floor.

Today, the Kogod Courtyard is a popular meeting place in DC. There is plenty of seating, free wifi, and a cafe with snacks for museum visitors open from 11:30 AM until 6:30 PM. It was named one of the “new seven wonders of the architecture world”  Condé Nast Traveler magazine.

National Portrait Gallery: Victor Bldg., 750 Ninth Street NW Suite 41, Washington, D.C. 20001.  Tel: (202) 633-8300. Open Wednesday–Sunday, 11:30 AM – 7 PM.

Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture – Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington D.C., U.S.A.)

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Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM), formerly called the Smithsonian Art Collection, National Gallery of Art (not to be confused with the current National Gallery of Art), National Collection of Fine Arts, and National Museum of American Art, is a part of the Smithsonian Institution.

The museum adopted its current name in October 2000.  Together with the Renwick Gallery, its branch museum, SAAM holds one of the world’s largest and most inclusive collections of art (from the Colonial period to the present) made in the United States.

Most exhibitions in the museum take place in the old Patent Office Building (shared with the National Portrait Gallery), the museum’s main building which contains expanded permanent-collection galleries and public spaces.  The craft-focused exhibitions are shown in the Renwick Gallery.

SAAM, describing itself as being “dedicated to collecting, understanding, and enjoying American art,” celebrates the extraordinary creativity of artists whose works reflect the American experience and global connections.

Through its national education program, the museum provides electronic resources to schools and the public, maintaining seven online research databases with more than 500,000 records, including the Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture that document more than 400,000 artworks in public and private collections worldwide.

Since 1951, the museum has maintained a traveling exhibition program and, as of 2013, more than 2.5 million visitors have seen the exhibitions.

Adoration of St. Joan of Arc – a fire-etched wood relief by J. William Fosdick in 1910 to appeal to wealthy industrialists who favored richly designed interiors and uplifting art. Fosdick tapped into the fantasy of a more spiritual past and, when it was exhibited, it was praised for craftsmanship that rivaled a Medieval masterwork.

The collection, first on display in the original Smithsonian Building (now nicknamed the “Castle”), was begun in 1829 and grew as the Smithsonian buildings grew, with the collection housed in one or more Smithsonian buildings on the National Mall.

“America Receiving the Nine Muses,” by Thomas Wilmer Dewing, was painted on an imposing, gilded Steinway piano and presented to Pres. Theodore Roosevelt in 1903. Painted on the piano’s lid, it merged the Classical theme of the Muses, with America as the new standard bearer of Western culture, and is decked out in symbols of Americana, from eagles to garlands to the coats-of-arms of the first thirteen states.

By the 1920s, space had become critical and, in order to display its collection of fine art, The Smithsonian renovated the Old Patent Office Building in Washington, D.C.’s downtown cultural district.  In 1968, in its current location, the Smithsonian American Art Museum was opened to the public.

Check out “Smithsonian Castle”

“Preamble,” a show of American ingenuity by Mike Wilkins created in 1959 to mark the Constitution’s bicentennial, is a 1,000-piece puzzle using a collection of vanity license plates, from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, to phonetically spell out the preamble to the US Constitution in abbreviated script.

Now the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s main building, it is now a National Historic Landmark. An example of Greek Revival architecture, it was designed by architects Robert Mills and Thomas U. Walter.

Yielding to the Ancestors while holding the Hands of (Lonnie Holly, 1992)

The building was restored during the 1990s and, during the 2000-2006 renovation, many of the building’s exceptional architectural features were restored including  the porticos modeled after the Parthenon in Athens, a curving double staircase, colonnades, vaulted galleries, large windows and skylights as long as a city block.

The Libyan Sibyl, by William Wetmore Story, (1861-68, marble), was inspired by events leading up to the Civil War. Described by Story as “my anti-slavery sermon in stone,” it depicts the Libyan Sibyl, the eldest of the legendary prophetesses of antiquity, as she foresees the terrible fate of the African people.

During the renovation, the Lunder Conservation Center, the Luce Foundation Center for American Art, the Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium and the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard were also added to the building.

The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly, a complex work of art created by James Hampton over a period of 14 years (1950-64), is an array based on several religious visions that prompted him to prepare for Christ’s return to earth. The ​“third heaven” is based on scriptures citing it as the ​“heaven of heavens” — God’s realm.

The renovation of the building was completed on July 1, 2006 and, in 2008, the American Alliance of Museums awarded reaccreditation to the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The Falling Gladiator, by William Rimmer, was based on a sculpture, from ancient Greece and Rome, of a mortally wounded man. This subject echoed the suffering of the United States on the eve of the Civil War. When the artist began work in January of 1861, six states had seceded from the Union, and the attack on Fort Sumter was just three months away.

The museum has a broad variety of American art, with more than 7,000 artists represented, and covers all regions and art movements found in the United States.

Washinton Resigning his Commission (Ferdinand Pettricj, c. 1841)

SAAM contains the world’s largest collection of New Deal art; a collection of contemporary craft, American impressionist paintings, and masterpieces from the Gilded Age; photography, modern folk art, works by African American and Latino artists, images of western expansion, and realist art from the first half of the twentieth century.

Among the Sierra Nevada, California (Albert Bierstadt, 1868, oil on canvas)

Among the significant artists represented in its collection are Nam June Paik, Jenny Holzer, David Hockney, Georgia O’Keeffe, John Singer Sargent, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Albert Bierstadt, Frances Farrand Dodge, Edmonia Lewis, Thomas Moran, James Gill, Edward Hopper, John William “Uncle Jack” Dey, Karen LaMonte and Winslow Homer.

An Eclogue (Kenyon Cox, 1890, oil on canvas)

The museum has two innovative public spaces, both opened in July 2000. The 20,400 sq. ft. Luce Foundation Center, on the third and fourth floors of American Art Museum, is the fourth center to bear the Luce Family name and the first visible art storage  study center Washington, D.C..

Luce Foundation Center

It allows visitors and patrons to browse more than 3,300 works of various niche art, usually not part of a main exhibition or gala special, in 64 secure glass cases which quadruples the number of artworks from the permanent collection on public view.

 

It features paintings densely hung on screens; sculptures; crafts and objects by folk and self-taught artists arranged on shelves. Large-scale sculptures are installed on the first floor. The center has John Gellatly’s European collection of decorative arts.

The Lunder Conservation Center is the first art conservation facility to allow the public permanent behind-the-scenes views of the preservation work of museums. Through floor-to-ceiling glass walls, conservation staff is visible to the public, allowing visitors to see, firsthand, all the techniques which conservators use to examine, treat, and preserve artworks.

The center has five conservation laboratories and studios equipped to treat paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, sculptures, folk art objects, contemporary crafts, decorative arts, and frames, using various specialized and esoteric tools, such as hygrothermographs, to maintain optimal temperature and humidity to preserve works of art.

The Center Staff from both the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery work in the Lunder Center.

The Vine (Harriett Whitney Frishmuth, 1921-23)

Smithsonian American Art Museum: 8th & F Streets NW, Washington, D.C.. Coordinates: 38°53′52″N 77°01′24″W.

Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture (Washington D.C., U.S.A.)

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The Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, actually a collection of institutions housed in the historic, gloriously renovated Old Patent Office Building, served as one of the earliest United States Patent Office buildings.  Here, Neo-Classicism meets 21st-century exuberance.

The Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture

Covering an entire city block defined by F and G Streets and 7th and 9th Streets NW, just south of  Chinatown in downtown Washington, it now houses two Smithsonian Institution museums – the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The building’s Greek Rival-stye facade

It also houses the Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery of the Archives of American Art; an art conservation facility (Lunder Conservation Center); an enclosed, 28,000-sq. ft. courtyard (Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard); a 20,400 sq. ft. open storage facility (Luce Foundation Center); a new 356-seat underground auditorium (Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium) and other operations within the Old Patent Office complex. By the end of 2007, more than 786,000 people had visited the two museums and, 10 years later, during the time of my visit, 1.3 million people have visited the place.

Check out “Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art – National Portrait Gallery” and Portraiture and “Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture – Smithsonian American Art Museum”

Before it became what it is today, through the Civil War and into the post-war period, the building was once home to many early government departments. It was used as a hospital, and The Bureau of Indian Affairs, the General Land Office, and the Bureau of Pensions jointly occupied the building with the Patent Office.

National Portrait Gallery

Both Clara Barton and American poet Walt Whitman worked as nurses there during the American Civil War. From 1854 to 1857, Barton worked in the building as a clerk to the Patent Commissioner, the first woman federal employee to receive equal pay. From January 24 to June 30, 1865, Waltman, who frequented “that noblest of Washington buildings” and read to wounded men, worked in Bureau of Indian Affairs before being fired for having a copy of Leaves of Grass in his desk.

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Here is the historical timeline of the building:

  • In 1836, construction of the building was started.
  • In 1851, architect Robert Mills was summarily dismissed as Congressional committees questioned his competence and his insistence on design changes that inserted unnecessary supporting columns and tie-rods. Construction continued under the direction of Thomas U. Walter, one of Mills’ harshest critics
  • During the Civil War, the building was turned into military barracks, hospital, and morgue. Wounded soldiers lay on cots in second-floor galleries, among glass cases holding models of inventions that had been submitted with patent applications.
  • In 1865, the building was completed
  • In March 1965, it was chosen as the venue for Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Ball.
  • In 1877, the building’s west wing suffered a fire, destroying some 87,000 patent models
  • From 1877–1885, it was restored by Adolf Cluss in the style he termed “modern Renaissance.”
  • In 1887, the Bureau of Pension moved to the new  Pension Bureau Building.
  • In 1898, the General Land Office and the Bureau of Indian Affairs vacated the building.
  • In 1932 the United States Civil Service Commission and the Government Accounting Office occupied the building after the Patent Office vacated it.
  • In 1942, the Government Accounting Office vacated the structure after its new headquarters nearby was complete.
  • In 1952, legislation to tear down the building and sell the land so a private parking garage could be built on the centrally located site was introduced in Congress in the waning days of the 82nd United States Congress but did not pass.
  • On March 21, 1958, Congress unanimously passed legislation authorizing the transfer of the building to the Smithsonian for a national art museum. President Dwight Eisenhower signed the legislation a few days later. Congress appropriated $33.5 million for the renovation.
  • In 1962, Congress passed legislation establishing the National Portrait Gallery
  • In November 1963, the Civil Service Commission moved out of the structure.
  • Starting in 1964, the Faulkner, Kingsbury & Stenhouse firm of architects supervised the renovation of the interior as museum space.
  • In November 1964, preparations for the buildings renovation began
  • On January 12, 1965, the building was designated as a S. National Historic Landmark.
  • By May 1965, the Grunley, Walsh Construction Co. began demolition of non-historic interior structures.
  • On October 15, 1966, it was added to S. National Register of Historic Places (NRHP reference No. 66000902).
  • By April 1968, the $6 million renovation was complete
  • In January 1968, the National Museum of American Art (now the Smithsonian American Art Museum) and the National Portrait Gallery opened. The north wing housed the art museum and the south wing housed the portrait gallery. Office space and a cafe occupied the east wing. The center courtyard had outdoor eating space for the cafe and several large trees.
  • In 1970, the renovation won the American Institute of Architects National Honor Award.
  • In 1995, the Smithsonian revealed that the building was in serious disrepair. The roof leaked, netting had to be placed in some galleries to catch falling ceiling plaster, window frames were rotting, the floor tiles in the Great Hall were crumbling, and the exterior facade was so degraded it was shedding fist-sized pieces of rock.
  • In January 1997, the Smithsonian announced that the building would close in January 2000 for a two-year, $42 million renovation (the estimated cost of the renovation then grew, initially in 2000 to $110-120 million). Hartman-Cox Architects was hired to oversee the conservation and repair. To be restored were the porticos modeled after the Parthenon in Athens, a curving double staircase, colonnades, vaulted galleries, large windows, and skylights as long as a city block.
  • Just three years later, as the renovation was about to begin, the cost of repairs had risen to $110 million to $120 million.
  • Prior to the building’s closure in January 2000, a decision was reached to allot about one-third of the building’s total space to the National Portrait Gallery while simultaneously eliminating the informal north–south division between the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum. The Smithsonian resolved the dispute practically – Art that best fit an exhibition space got it. Modern art, which often tends toward large canvases, was installed on the high-ceilinged third floor.
  • By March 2001, as the cost of the renovation rose to $180 million, Nan Tucker McEvoy (a California newspaper heiress and arts patron) donated $10 million for the renovation.
  • Later in 2001, the Henry Luce Foundation gave another $10 million.
  • In June 2001, reconstruction costs were estimated at $214 million.
  • In July 2001, the reopening was pushed back even further to July 2006.
  • In 2003, the government increased its contribution to $166 million and more than $40 million in private funds had been raised.
  • In August 2003, Congress approved a major change to the renovation design – adding a glass roof to the open courtyard in the center of the Old Patent Office Building.
  • In March 2004, the Smithsonian announced that architect Norman Foster of Foster and Partners would design the glass canopy.
  • In early November 2004, the National Capital Planning Commission(NCPC), which has statutory authority to approve all buildings and renovations in the D.C. metropolitan area, approved the preliminary design for the glass canopy.  That same month, real estate development executive Robert Kogod and his wife, Arlene (heiress to Charles E. Smith Construction fortune) donated $25 million to complete the canopy. By then, costs had risen to $298 million. $60 million in private funds still needed to be raised.
  • In January 2005, the United States Commission of Fine Arts, an advisory commission on design, approved the canopy.
  • In April 2005, the Smithsonian said that the canopy would not be ready by the time the museum reopened in July 2006, and would be installed in 2007.
  • On June 2, 2005, the the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) reversed its preliminary approval of the canopy
  • On August 4, 2005, the Smithsonian brought five alternatives to the NCPC.
  • On September 8, 2005, the NCPC reversed itself yet again, and approved one of the revised designs. The delay cost the Smithsonian $10 million.
  • In October 2005, the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation made a $45 million donation to the NPG to finish both the building renovation and the canopy. The Smithsonian agreed to call the two museums, the conservation center, courtyard, storage facility, and other operations within the Old Patent Office complex the “Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture” in appreciation for the gift.
  • On July 1, 2006, after undergoing extensive renovations, the building and the Smithsonian American Art Museum was reopened. The total cost of the building’s renovation was $283 million.
  • In just two months, attendance at the renovated building rose significantly to 214,495.
  • On October 7, 1968, the National Portrait Gallery opened to the public.
  • In September 2007, video security cameras were hastily installed to stop vandalism as some patrons spit on art they did not like, while others kissed or touched some paintings.

Luce Foundation Center

The massive building, designed in the Greek Revival style by architect Robert Mills and Thomas U. Walter, took 31 years to complete. Mills spanned the interior spaces with masonry vaulting without the use of wooden beams. Skylights and interior light courts filled the spaces with daylight. It has a sandstone and marble façade, and a central portico modeled after the the Parthenon of Athens, a departure in Washington where previously ambitious public buildings had been based on Roman and Renaissance precedents.

The Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture: 8th and F St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20001.  Tel: 202.633.1000 (recorded information/live voice).  E-mail:  info@si.edu.  Website:   www.si.edu/visit.  Coordinates: 38.89778°N 77.022936°W

Enid A. Haupt Garden (Washington D.C., U.S.A.)

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Parterre of the Enid A. Haupt Garden

The 1.7-hectare (4.2 acre) Enid A. Haupt Garden, a public garden in the Smithsonian complex, adjacent to the Smithsonian Castle (formally the Smithsonian Institution Building) on the National Mall, replaced an existing Victorian Garden which had been built to celebrate the nation’s Bicentennial in 1976.

Check out “Smithsonian Castle”

Designed to be a modern representation of American Victorian gardens as they appeared in the mid to late 19th century, it was opened on May 21, 1987 as part of the redesigned Castle quadrangle and was named after Enid A. Haupt who provided the $3 million endowment which financed its construction and maintenance.

More broadly, the quadrangle redesign project and the Smithsonian Gardens  were part of the vision of S. Dillon Ripley, the eighth Secretary of the Smithsonian, who felt that the museum experience should extend beyond the museums’ buildings into the outdoor spaces.

The gardens landscape design features the collaborative efforts of architect Jean Paul Carlhian (principal in the Boston firm of Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson and Abbott), Lester Collins (Sasaki Associates Inc. of Watertown, Massachusetts) and James R. Buckler (founding director of the Smithsonian’s Office of Horticulture).

The symmetrically patterned and carefully manicured parterre (French for “on the ground”), behind the Smithsonian Castle in the south yard, is the central feature of the garden.  Measuring 44 m. (144 ft.) long by 20 m. (66 ft.) wide, it is flanked by the Moongate Garden to the west and the Fountain Garden to the east.

Monkey Puzzle Tree (Araucana araucaria)

The formal parterre, an ornamental garden type originating in 16th century Renaissance Italy and typically associated with the elaborate designs of the Victorian era, predates the creation of the Enid A. Haupt Garden and was inspired by a design from the 1876 Centennial Exposition Horticultural Hall in Philadelphia.  When the Enid A. Haupt Garden was created, this parterre was saved and incorporated into the new formal garden. It complements the ornate architecture of the adjacent Smithsonian Castle.

Bismarck Palm (Bismarckia nobilis)

With a changing palette of colors, shapes and textures, the layers of colorful, low-growing plants, meticulously laid out in symmetrical patterns,  make up the design of the parterre that are changed every six months, typically in September and May. They fill out the series of diamonds, fleurs-de-lis, and scallops or swags. Within a circle in the northeast portion of the parterre is the Andrew Jackson Downing Urn.

Horizontal sundial

Other notable design features include saucer and tulip magnolias, brick walkways, and historical cast-iron garden furnishings from the Smithsonian Gardens‘ Garden Furniture Collection.  A 12 square, horizontal sundial, sitting just outside the south door of the Smithsonian Castle, was built in 1994 by David Todd (a clock expert at the National Museum of American History) and David Shayt.  Calibrated for the longitude and latitude of its location, it is subdivided into 15 minute increments and has a compass rose. Its dial sits atop a rectangular granitepedestal.

Check out “National Museum of American History: Kenneth E. Behring Center“

Moongate Garden

The Moongate Garden, designed by architect Jean Paul Carlhian, was inspired by the gardens and architecture of the Temple of Heaven (Beijing, China) which was designed using a geometrical, axial layout, centered on the cardinal points of the compass. It was meant to take its visitors to a relaxing place surrounded by water where they may absorb the cool air emanating from the water.

Check out “The Temple of Heaven“

Granite and water (the dominant feature in the garden) are used abundantly in this garden. In Chinese culture, rocks (thought to symbolize the body of the earth) and water (symbolizing the spirit of earth) symbolizes the basic constituents of nature. Water gives off shimmering light effects in the sunlight and reflects the glow of the moon at night while its reflection gives the garden the appearance of being larger than it actually is.

Its overall circular pool design was meant to remind us of the windows in the National Museum of African Art (a technique that Carlhian also applied to the Fountain Garden). To align important features of the Arts and Industries Building with the Freer Gallery of Art, Carlhian utilized his so-called “pinwheel treatment,” with the path leading into the Moongate Garden entering at the southwest corner and exiting at the northeast corner.

The Moongate Garden has two 9-ft. high pink granite moon gates on either side of a pool that is paved with half-round pieces of granite, strategically placed to frame important features of the surrounding landscape. Two more gates, laid flat, provide seating in opposite corners.

Renwick Gate

The Fountain Garden, beside the entrance to the National Museum of African Art, was also designed by Jean Paul Carlhian and was modeled after the Court of the Lions at Alhambra, a 13th-century Moorish palace and fortress in  Granada,  Andalusia, Spain.

As with most Islamic gardens, the Fountain Garden is geometrically symmetrical and suggests a walled paradise, an important concept in early Persian and Islamic garden design. It includes a central fountain and water channels (those on top of the low walls around the central fountain were designed to represent the four rivers of paradise described in the Koran). The bubbling center jet of the central fountain symbolizes paradise/eternity itself. A chadar (“veil”) of cascading water, at the garden’s north end, streams down a tile wall.

Enid A. Haupt Garden: 1037-1057 Independence Avenue SW and L’Enfant Plaza SW, Washington, D.C.  Tel: 202.633.2220.  E-mail: gardens@si.edu.  Open daily, 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM.  Admission is free.  Coordinates: 38°53′17″N 77°01′34″W.